Eric Bischoff reveals how Steve Austin could be responsible for the lack of big stars in WWE today
Former WCW Hardcore Champion Eric Bischoff was the guest on Busted Open Radio recently and spoke about how Stone Cold Steve Austin's departure from WWE in the 2000s has impacted the current state of the WWE roster.
Eric Bischoff opined that while WWE has a lot of great talent right now, there is no one top guy. He says that on any given PPV these Superstars can be interchanged and it won't affect the PPV. Whereas earlier on, if a top star like Stone Cold was absent from the card, it would have severely hampered the overall product.
Eric Bischoff on today's roster
Eric Bischoff also speculated that one of the reasons for WWE not having one top star is so that WWE itself is the main attraction and everyone else is just a co-star.
You know, it could be a little of both, I don’t know. I think over the past 5 or 10 years, there has been a decision, intentionally or unintentionally, to make WWE the star and everybody else the co-star. And when WWE is the and everybody else is the co-star, the co-stars could become interchangeable. And I understand that, to a degree, from a business point of view.
The former SmackDown Executive Director Eric Bischoff further talks about how Stone Cold's departure from the company probably made them realise that too much dependence on just one Superstar is not a good idea.
[Jim Ross] just had a podcast about Stone Cold Steve Austin walking out of the WWE. Imagine the position that put WWE in. You’ve got your whole company built up around one guy – all your marketing, all your promotion, all your plans built up around one guy, who decides for whatever reason, justifiably or not, he’s going home, or he gets hurt or he joins a monastery or whatever. You know, when you build your entire company around one guy and that one guy is no longer available, it does take a while to rebuild and it’s a problem. (H/T: WrestleZone)
Even though Eric Bischoff is not sure if WWE has decided it on purpose or if it's just chance, but he admits that there is a lot of inter-changeable top talent in WWE right now.
Now, again, I don’t know if it was by default or by design, but right now, you’ve got a lot of top talent, any one of them can be interchanged for the other on any given pay-per-view and no one will really care.